The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sunday

Increasingly controversial anti-graft war

The facts are truly and depressingly worrisome. First was the $2.1bn arms scandal allegedly directed by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), which has sucked in so many people, especially top Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leaders, and many companies, local and international, in all sectors of the economy. While the dust was yet to settle, the focus has shifted to arms procurement directed by top officers in the Nigerian Air Force (NAF). A report by the Committee on Audit of Defence Equipment set up to look into how and at what prices NAF procured arms between 2007 and 2015 has established that another $2bn and more was also spent in very questionable circumstances with little result. President Muhammadu Buhari has, therefore, ordered a probe of the 17 top officers and 21 firms involved in the scandal. The list includes former Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, and two former Air Marshals.

The audit committee gave a horrendous account of military equipment purportedly bought but were either not supplied, were obsolete, or were already mothballed. In virtually all the procurement, said the audit committee, the prices were horrifyingly inflated. The impression the report gave — and the public will remember that the ONSA scandal was not any different — was a military establishment gone absolutely raving mad with corruption. The EFCC has now taken over both the ONSA case and the NAF bazaar. Many officers will be hauled in for interrogation in the coming days, and after a while they will have their day in court. But far beyond the coming trials and the sickening amount involved is the fact that in the case of the NAF procurement, the audit committee was actually able to establish some links between the purchase of obsolete equipment and the death of air force officers in crashed helicopters.

The scale of the thievery perpetrated by those put in a position of trust, especially military officers who had a professional duty to ensure their men had access to fighting tools in order to fight and win, has led many commentators to insist that whatever constitutional rights of suspects were being allegedly violated should be overlooked as collateral damage in the great and transcendental war to save the nation. As they put it, national interest must always be prioritised above private interest. Lawyers are duplicitous and venal, they suggest, and the character of judges, sadly, cannot be certified. The government, they conclude, is therefore justified to take some extraordinary measures to protect national interest. The public must remember, they further suggest, that the thievery that attended arms procurement led to the prolongation of the Boko Haram war, and the death of many fine soldiers sent to war either improperly kitted or with poor and inadequate weapons.

This sentiment, which its protagonists insist is absolutely justified, is shared by President Buhari himself. In his maiden media chat, he was so openly outraged by an interviewer’s suggestion that he seemed to place his desire to punish suspects outside legal and constitutional provisions that he wondered why anyone would talk of bail in the light of the gravity of the offences the suspects committed. This sentiment, this outrage, is now almost so universal in the country that a few Nigerians, including this columnist, are beginning to worry that a national hysteria may be brewing capable of perpetrating a worse crime against the law and constitution in the name of fighting corruption. Corruption should be fought, and fought until justice is served for the millions, including fighting men, who have lost their lives because of the stealing by a few, because of the abuse of public trust by a few. But there is need for caution.

Of all those horrified by the scale of thievery, and of all those baying for blood, the president has the highest responsibility to ensure that public revenge is moderated and mediated according to the law and constitution. He has not discharged this responsibility in line with the oath he took. He is attempting to fight the corrupt outside the provisions of the law. It is true the law is inadequate. But until he can sponsor changes in the law, he is not at liberty to fight as he pleases, nor does he have the freedom to pronounce or think the suspects guilty until the courts have said so. Importantly too, he must be extra careful, notwithstanding his outrage, not to create a groundswell of lynch mentality upon which suspects would meet their doom, and the judiciary would be ridiculed and undermined. Should he and millions of his frenzied supporters create an atmosphere reminiscent of the United States McCarthy witch-hunt and the Chinese cultural revolution, they will open up the country to anarchy much worse than the financial scandal orchestrated by looters.

The president is not careful enough. And his refusal to exercise care in prosecuting a great cause is manifesting in ugly colours apparently because he does not have impressive understanding of the kind of society he wants to help create. He has no social charter, no political philosophy, and no nuanced understanding of the dangers constituted by impunity, whether soft or brazen. The president must be told that while he is engaged in a good cause to fight corruption, which he rightly argues is a great national interest cause, he undermines that national interest by inadvertently subverting the courts and the judiciary, and giving the general impression that suspects can be lynched figuratively on the pages of newspapers or literally on the streets, in prisons and in EFCC custody. He must not have any illusion how national interest is defined. He has a responsibility to define it as the constitution has done, and be faithful to that definition.

From the alarming positions taken by many commentators, some of them eminent lawyers, the foundations for anarchy, self-help and legal and constitutional expediencies are being sown. They are wrong, and the president is wrong. A good cause can be damaged by the manner it is prosecuted, as even common sense teaches. The standards the society must uphold — and the president is the battering ram in the hands of the society — must transcend that of the suspects and other criminals. The society cannot be bigger or more civilised than the standards it embraces. Nothing on earth, therefore, justifies what the Buhari government is trying to do to the law and the constitution. For justice must not just be done, it must be seen to be done.

President Buhari must listen not only to those baying mindlessly for blood because in their opinion the Nigerian justice system appears inadequate to take care of the huge scale of malfeasance perpetrated by suspects. He must listen very carefully also to those who say he has a greater and more binding responsibility to fight his causes within the ambits of the law. The society is bigger than its thieves, more civilised than they are, and for the sake of coming generations, the president who is the chief custodian of the country’s laws and emblem of all that is good and noble about Nigeria, must ensure that at no time will the society descend to the brutish, reckless, self-help levels embraced by thieves who have nothing to lose, not even their names or dignity.

The next set of suspects the EFCC will bring to trial must show that the agency and the president have learnt from their mistakes. But if they will not change because of the overwhelming support they are receiving from the public, if they look more at the magnitude of the crime than the danger of undermining the constitution, if they keep arguing with scant regard for the laws of the land that public or national interest overrides private interest, they must also know that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. Indeed, the Buhari presidency must take caution now, for there is no telling what he would do, or how dangerously he would whip up emotions once the searchlight is beamed to other sectors of the economy and the true scale of the stealing perpetrated in the past decade or so comes to light.

January 17, 2016
One particular record of underachievement APC must avoid: Okonjo-Iweala’s 4% reduction of corruption, waste and squandermania

First of all, it is useful to revealthe thought, the motivation that inspired the reflections in this piece. This is none other than the profoundly disturbing fear that our new ruling party, the APC, might in the end match the former ruling party, the PDP, in its abysmal record of underachievement. Since it is still very early in the reign of the new ruling party, I admit that this thought, this worry is perhaps unfair and may in the end be unjustified. Moreover, though I am neither a member nor a supporter of the APC as such, I very much want the new ruling party to succeed, if by success we mean a new economic and political order, a new dispensation in which the wealth of the nation is used, not for the few rich and powerful of the land, but to create security, peace, unity, employment opportunities and better and more dignified lives for the vast majority of Nigerians throughout the length and breadth of the country. Any ruling party, any administration that succeeds in achieving these defining aspirations of our peoples in their tens of millions will have my support, even if both its declared and undeclared but practical and effective ideological inclinations are unacceptable to me – as those of the new ruling party, APC, are. How do these musings relate to the topic of this piece?

Those who are regular readers of this column would, I hope, have immediately recognized the allusion to Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s 4% reduction of corruption, waste and squandermania in the title of this piece since I have referred to it many times in this column. For readers who may be encountering it for the first time, here’s the relevant fact: in its publication of May 3, 2012, the British bible of global capitalist news reporting and analysis, The Economist, quoted Okonjo-Iweala in a declaration that though corruption and waste were killing Nigeria, they were so monumental in scope that she would be quite happy if by the time she left office in 2015 she would have managed to achieve as little as 4% reduction. I have not stopped being amazed and angered by the scale of the cynicism inherent in this declaration. But in the wake of the declared and still unfolding revelations of Dasukigate, I now have a slightly revised view of the former Finance Minister’s cynicism: as the Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Okonjo-Iweala personally authorized many of the vast, mind-boggling withdrawals from the Central Bank that fueled the Dasukigate bonanza – doesn’t this show that her 4% super-underachievement in corruption and waste reduction was an insider’s knowledge of and acceptance of underachievement as systemic, inevitable and, Heavens help us, enduring?And if that is the case, wouldn’t these systemic and enduring aspects of underachievement of the PDP era persist to haunt and perhaps even trap the new ruling party and the Buhari administration?

I do not have any definitive answers to these questions, at least not yet; all I can discern for the moment are signs and they are very perturbing signs. For instance, I am almost certain that many of those reading these words do not remember the work of the Ahmed Joda Transition Committee that President-Elect Muhammadu Buhari himself set up to ease his transition from election into incumbency. But dear reader, please take note and remember that the President rejected one of the most crucial recommendations of the Joda Transition Committee and he did so without a single word of explanation. This was the recommendation that since Nigeria under the PDP had one of the largest, most wasteful and most inefficient ministerial cabinets in the whole world, the President should substantially reduce the number of ministers in his cabinet. In making that recommendation, the Joda Committee supplied comparative data and statistics to demonstrate how completely out of step Nigeria under the PDP was in the size and inefficiency of its ministerial cabinet. As a columnist, I was personally very gratified by this particular recommendation of the Joda Committee since I had written a lot about the matter in this column. But the President rejected the recommendation and he did so without any explanations of why he did so.

There is a plausible reason for the President’s rejection of the recommendation. Moreover, it is worthwhile for us to reflect on the implications of this “explanation” in our reflections in this piece on specters of underachievement that stalk the rule of the APC and the Buhari administration. Here’s the “explanation”: there is a binding clause in the 1999 Constitution that makes it mandatory for the federal ministerial cabinet to have a minister from each of the 36 states of the federation. This in effect means that the President’s “executive” hands were tied; he had no choice but to have at least 36 members of the cabinet. But this is a specious argument and it betrays facile, rigid reasoning. The Joda Committee was very much aware of this constitutional provision, just as I have been aware of it in my innumerable calls for a major downsizing of our ministerial cabinet, but neither the Joda Committee nor I was swayed by this presumed binding force of the constitutional provision. For the truth of the matter is that our Constitution was made for us; we were not “made” for, and we do not live or die by our Constitution. Indeed, throughout the world and in all periods of modern history, constitutions have been constantly revised in the light of changing times and exigencies. Thus, the President’s rejection of that Joda Committee recommendation is nothing but a demonstration of a lack of political will and vision. In the context of the present discussion, it also shows a predisposition for underachievement due to systemic and enduring features of the rule of the PDP. Let me explain.

As quiet as it is kept, the single greatest cause of waste, squandermania, inefficiency and underachievement in our political order is not corruption; it is the extremely bloated size and cost of governance in our country. The standard, anodyne way in which this is expressed is the statement we all too often read or hear that recurrent expenditure is far greater than capital expenditure in the budgets of all levels of government in our country, federal, state and local. In reality and in plain language this is nothing other than the fact that we simply cannot afford to have 36 states; we simply cannot afford all the federal and state chief executives, together with their typically very large ministerial cabinets, advisers and assistants. In other words, we hide under the abstract discourse of excess of recurrent expenditure over capital expenditure instead of saying, quite simply and directly, that many of our states should be merged; many of our governors should be let go; and the large armies of administrative and technical support staff in all our state capitals and local government headquarters should be laid off and – redeployed into truly productive employment.

It is to be hoped that readersof these reflections appreciate the fact that I am not writing these words in a vacuum. Right now, at this very historical and political moment, many states of the federation are on the brink of bankruptcy and many workers have not been paid for months on end. The “convenient” explanation – which is not untrue – is that the departing PDP administrations left the country in a state of undeclared bankruptcy. However, this is only half of the truth. The other half of the story, so far at least, concerns the indications we are receiving every day that the new ruling party does not seem inclined to fundamentally change course from the wasteful, underachieving paths of the PDP. The new legislators are insisting on getting the same jumbo salaries and allowances as the previous set; the Presidency is buying a new fleet of very expensive cars for top officials; the President’s budget for overseas trips has actually been increased, this in a period when shortfalls in revenue expectations have increased sharply; and new mansions are being built for the Vice President and the Senate President, among other top public officeholders, even though there are mansions in Abuja that were built for the previous Vice President and Senate President. At the very least, one would have expected that in a period when hundreds of thousands of workers are unpaid for months and millions of unemployed Nigerians face very bleak prospects, the new ruling party would have gone out of its way to establish a clear difference between itself and the previous ruling party in perpetuating this tradition of extremely indecent and immoral binging by our rulers on our collective wealth.

It is against this background of a creeping and unsettling sense of business as usual that I locate the line of departure indicated in the title of this piece. By the end of its sixteen-year reign, the previous ruling party had completely given up on any pretense to the pursuit of the common good; it had in fact embraced impunity and underachievement as the barge of its total flight from reality, especially the reality of its clear and looming defeat and consignment to the dustbin of history. Okonjo-Iweala’s 4% abyss of underachievement is the ultimate marker of that flight from reality of the Jonathan administration and the PDP. No matter how much APC is trying – and succeeding – in looking and acting very much like PDP, this Okonjo-Iweala abyss is something that APC should at least avoid reaching or being plunged into. Nowhere is this more palpable than in the declared legal battle against corruption. I have been more restrained in my previous comments on how this is being handled by the administration. I think it is time for me now to state unequivocally that the level of preparation for this battle by the administration is so lackluster, so mediocre that one can be pardoned if one is beginning to see the specter of underachievement on the scale of the Okonjo-Iweala 4% corruption reduction katakata. The looters are winning; or, they seem far much better prepared for the battle than the Buhari administration. More specifically, the Attorney General of the Federation seems to lack the stomach, the heart and the requisite experience for this battle. In this case, we must prepare ourselves for a long and very ineptly fought battle, even as the administration gives assurance every day that things are going well. I hope I am wrong in this. How I wish I could say that I know that I am wrong in this.

Biodun Jeyifo

bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

January 17, 2016
Are Nigerians condemned to this profligate national assembly?

Why are politicians so conscienceless they would always agree on loots, irrespective of differences in party affiliation or is the National Assembly a cultic coven where they swear to things besides the wellbeing of the populace?

Wale Adeoye wrote, mutatis mutandis: “The 100m collected by Chief Falae is most distasteful. It’ is a naked case of corruption and a display of crass opportunism. His party is SDP, not PDP. So what we are seeing is a sly script whereby the then ruling party had many quislings parading themselves as independent parties. The implication is that all their candidates were a ruse in a deceitful plot to fool Nigerians. He succeeded in fooling millions of people who voted for SDP thinking they prefer it to PDP or the APC especially in Ogun State, where Chief Segun Osoba held sway. It is not funny that an Afenifere chieftain could be involved in this sort of thing. Ladoja and his Accord Party could not have surprised many. The cash meant for development and transformation of roads, healthcare and social services were squandered in the most conscienceless manner. It then means that all the support for GEJ by the SDP was driven by greed and avarice. Chief Falae should ask himself if he thinks Awo could ever have partnered Anenih in this dirty deal. Were this to be Tinubu, some Afenifere subalterns would have promptly turned emergency authors, not only hectoring us, but churning out books, literally at the speed of light, to be launched by whatever remains of the PDP rump.
Also, one should ask the crooked banks what role they played in the entire Dasukigate. Was the 100m paid into banks? Did the banks raise issues as requested by the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit? Was it raw cash indicating clear cases of money laundering? On a lighter side, HRH Sanusi Lamido Sanusi should be recalled immediately. All said, there is the urgent need to cut the spiral wave of election finances and the crazy expenditure by politicians in order to get elected. There should be a cap on these huge election expenses which have turned our own version of elections to a venture driven by investments and immediate profit. Politicians who bribe or outspend the stipulated caps should be heavily sanctioned. If we are able to get around this, we would see responsible individuals, not cheats and misfits, emerge as leaders in every phase of our politics which  presently looks like the caricature of a wasted generation”- Adeoye, a multi-award winning journalist

What exactly will drive Nigerians literally mad and get them sick and tired enough to risk all, and everything, to storm this very inconsiderate National Assembly? When will an average Nigerian policeman, who puts his life on the line to ensure that angry Nigerians cannot storm this anti-people National Assembly, realise that the men and women he stands ramrod, defending with his life, together with their bureaucrats and staff of the National Assembly Service Commission as well as those of the Institute of Legislative studies, number less than 10,000 but has, in the last five years, cornered a humongous, yearly budget of N150 billion? Nor is it likely that the massive drop in oil prices which has completely rubbished the national currency, would be considered by them as   tangible enough to restrain or moderate their greed? When exactly would these set of Nigerians, many of who had been state governors, ministers or held other high public offices which Nigerians know are mostly avenues to steal from the public coffer, and through which many of them became emergency billionaires, realise that there is a God to whom they will account? Why are politicians so conscienceless they would always agree on loots, irrespective of differences in party affiliation or is the National Assembly a cultic coven where they swear to things besides the wellbeing of the populace? What drives their insatiable greed?

Now, these are, no doubt, grave charges which should not be lightly made. I therefore proceed to properly situate these charges to let Nigerians know how gravely ill-served they are by a group of people to whom their, and the national interest , should ordinarily have been paramount . To do this, I shall rely, heavily, on the great investigative work done by a team of reporters from the stable of this newspaper, whose very dispiriting findings were contained in the article: N4.7 BILLION VEHICLES –NASS JOLLY RIDE HITS ROAD BUMP which appeared in its edition of January 10, 2016.

The report begins: ’the yearly allocation to the national assembly, which it shrouds in utter secrecy, surpasses the annual budget of 21 of Nigeria’s 36 states, including Katsina, Benue and Jigawa – all three with a population of more than four million people’. It went further to say that whilst Nigerians are busy discussing their mindless plan to buy cars running into about N4.7 Billion which they claim are for committee work, as if they were granted car loans for jolly rides, the vehicles’ huge insurance premium which runs into hundreds of millions of naira and cannot be concluded without their interests being taken into consideration, escapes critical attention. In their unduly secretive financial arrangement, not a single Nigerian outside their cult, can claim to know how much they earn individually. While, with the mere touch of the button on your computer, you can know that the U.S Senator/Congressman earns $174,000 and his U.K. counterpart earns 74,000 thousand pounds, both with a stated allowance for aides which they dare not divert as our own National Assembly just did the N10.6 billion recently approved for all the legislative aides of the 7th National Assembly. All you can say with a measure of certainty concerning these our overlords is that they pocket a minimum quarterly allowance of not less than between N45 -60 million. That in a country with a huge unemployment percentage and where the few lucky to be employed do not know when you would be paid, if at all.

The report did not fail to touch on the ‘committee cars’ bought at outrageous prices of about N9 million each during the 7th Assembly. According to their findings, each senator went away with at least one Prado jeep sold off by the National Assembly Management at a paltry N2 million each. Ask them where this money is, and you are told that the National Assembly is not a revenue generating arm of government. Competing with the reckless manner cars are bought and disposed off is the gravely outlandish manner in which they choose to build whatever type of mansion which catches their fancy. Though as far back as during the Obasanjo era most benefits, including housing, have been monetised, this National Assembly deemed it necessary to devote a whooping N502 million for the construction of a new official residence for the Senate President. That will, however, account for only site clearing, earthworks, unstated outstanding liabilities – Nigerians know that type – as another N200,694,435 is proposed to cover ‘consultancy and outstanding liabilities’ – reminds one of that Benue politician’s consultancy bonanza in Dasukigate. This is besides the fact that the FCT is to embark on the construction of an official residence for the Speaker of the House of Representatives at a cost of N1,035,652,652 to which amount I know Senate President’s residence would soon be jacked up to since it is all driven by ego and the very reason we saw that near murderous fight for leadership positions in the National Assembly earlier in the session.

All these, and the freedom to spend money like it was going out of fashion, the reporters discovered, underpins the National Assembly’s single minded opposition to its   inclusion in the Treasury Single Account(TSA). The way they argue, you would think they were the ones elected president. They are not in any way superior to the other arms of government which are already captured in that system. For the president to agree to that outlandish demand, would mean diminishing the presidency and it will be difficult for Nigerians to know who exactly is in charge.

It is my hope that sooner than later, Nigerians would come to the realisation that the National Assembly, as presently constituted, and relying on Section 7 (10) and 2 of the National Assembly Service Commission Act 2000, as it does, to act like a bull in a china shop, is certainly not in their best interest. Everything should be done, therefore, through civil society organisations leading every other strata of the Nigerian polity, to obliterate this overpowering impunity by cancelling out the Senate, which actually adds nothing to our well being. Nigeria does not need anything more than a responsible, people-friendly House of Representatives.

January 17, 2016
Who is afraid of the cost of change? 1

Failure on the part of ministers to declare their assets is already being construed by citizens as attempts on their part to hide something.

President Buhari may be doing his utmost to fight corruption and re-engineer governance in a way to make corruption unattractive to the thieves of state among us. What is not clear is to what extent he, his co-rulers in the legislature and judiciary, and the citizenry at large are ready to cope with the inevitable cost of change. The focus of today’s piece is to draw the attention of the president and his ruling party to many lapses in the organisation and governance of the state that require immediate change, to prevent the war on corruption becoming ‘a drum that breaks in the middle of the dance it has started.’

The president needs to re-read the history of corruption in the polity and the various manifestations of policies designed to give undue advantage to the few with access to power in the country. When the military came to power for the first time in 1966, it accused the Balewa government of corruption and pledged to citizens that the military government would rid political and bureaucratic corruption in the country. The promise was never fulfilled, especially since easy flow of petrodollars under the various military governments between 1966 and 1999 and the civilian governments of 1979 and 1983. The more revenue came from petroleum, the more corruption festered until it reached its apogee in between 1999 and 2015. It was a sign of relief to the citizens when Buhari came out under the auspices of the All Progressives Congress to promise that he would give all his energy to fight and kill corruption in order to prevent corruption from killing the country.

Corruption as abuse of power for material gain at the expense of the citizenry takes various forms in our country, with some forms seeming legitimate on the surface while in reality they are designed to give to political office holders and top public officers undue advantage, all on the excuse that there was enough revenue from petroleum to pamper and indulge the few Nigerians that are lucky enough to have access to political or bureaucratic power. For example, the salaries and allowances given to political officer holders—at both the executive and legislative levels—are outlandish, and those receiving these perquisites are aware of the fact that they are getting more than they deserve in an economy that is in every sense of the word undeveloped or underdeveloped, lacking every basic element of modern life; electricity, transportation infrastructure, proper health and education provision, housing provision for citizens, etc.

It is no use for anyone to pretend that citizens are not getting worried about the miraculous power of the status quo to remain intact even after eight months after the inauguration of a change regime. Instructively, President Buhari and Vice President Osinbajo have declared their assets as required by the country’s laws. But there is no evidence that President Buhari’s ministers have declared their assets months after their appointment. The president in his recent Media Chat confirmed that he expects his ministers to do the right thing and does not believe that he has to drag them to do this. Without doubt, the buck stops on the desk of the president in this regard. He has to read the riot act to his ministers, if this becomes necessary to make them do what he and his vice president had already done, to assure citizens that the ministers are not above the law of the land. Citizens are already grumbling about what they see as nonchalance on the part of the ministers. It is not good for consolidation of electoral democracy for people with political appointments to discountenance such an important law. Failure on the part of ministers to declare their assets is already being construed by citizens as attempts on their part to hide something.

With respect to the salaries and allowances (including the so-called constituency allowance that turned lawmakers into executive officers), there is nothing in the character of presidential system all over the world that justifies what Nigerian lawmakers earn and the amount of public funds available to them to spend. This column raised this issue recently in the essays titled ‘Pork Barrel Politics.’ Those responsible for writing the constitution that gave enormous powers to the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) could only have done this on account of the huge revenue flowing into the country from petroleum. There is no better time than now to revisit the policy of indulgence of lawmakers and ministers with regards to salaries and allowances, as well as the policy on severance benefits to citizens who opted for political office. Severance packages should not apply to individuals who work in any capacity for less than eight years for members of the executive and the legislative branches of government. It will be a matter of serious controversy if tax payers have to pay such humongous salaries and allowances to political office holders in the lean years thrown up by a huge slump in the price of petroleum and the new danger that may come to Nigeria’s share of the gas market from the United States becoming a major gas exporter.

It is one thing to recognize the negative impact of corruption on the polity and the economy as President Buhari has done very well. It is another thing to come to terms with a political culture that promotes social and economic injustice, and thus creates a conducive atmosphere for corruption on the part of those unduly favoured. There is so much haemorrhage in a system that expends so much of the commonwealth on just a few of its citizens at the expense of the majority. For example, why are former lawmakers given police protection long after they have ceased to be in office? Even many ministers who served in military governments and in the Obasanjo regime are still moving around with police orderlies while there are no police officers to protect citizens. Former lawmakers still ride vehicles without registration numbers or some with House or Senate registration plate numbers, just as there are former state commissioners and local government chairmen with police orderlies. Citizens are already wondering why those who had served the governments that had brought Nigeria to its present low level of development over the years are being given undue protection at the expense of the citizenry. Citizens are already expressing surprise in both traditional and social media about a policy that continues to pamper former office holders. Some citizens are even asking why such people would need special protection, if they have not done anything criminal.

A system created at a time that military and civilian rulers thought that money was not a problem for Nigeria should be given serious review now that the era of manna from the bowels of the earth is fast disappearing. For example, what message are policies of indulging top political and bureaucratic officers sending to citizens when they provide severance packages that include free cars, generators, diesel, and houses for former governors and deputy governors after they leave office while millions of citizens still in service do not have any housing or transportation benefits? A system that promotes the kind of inequality that is evident between those privileged to be in high political positions and the millions at the bottom cannot but nurture corruption among men and women who have been made to see the wealth of the country as belonging primarily to them.

The philosophy and praxis of our change regime cannot avoid taking a close look at the culture of governments in Nigeria in the age of plenty. The outcry against lawmakers’ decision to spend billions of naira on cars and the seeming slowness on the part of RMAFC to review the salary/allowance package adopted in the days of oil boom show lack of enthusiasm on the part of political officers to come to terms with the reality on the ground in an era that petroleum no longer brings huge inflows of dollars. President Buhari’s observation at his recent media chat that it is only citizens and the judiciary that can check any excesses on the part of all the branches of government is remarkable. As this column plans to discuss next week, citizens need to be encouraged to invoke their sovereignty on all matters by the executive’s unmistakable preparedness to be more forthcoming with information.

January 17, 2016
Dasuki’s forbidden porridge

Even our elders allegedly chopped-and-cleaned mouth

They are mostly elders, and this newspaper on Monday did justice to the story of how they also ‘obtained’, allegedly from the much beleaguered $2.1billion arms procurement fund that the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, disbursed as he pleased. With their pictures prominently gracing the cover of the day’s edition, we saw what looked like a galaxy of pan-Nigerian elders. Understandably, the first portrait was that of Chief Olu Falae, followed by former Anambra State Governor Jim Nwobodo; then Rashidi Ladoja, the former Governor of Oyo State; then former Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State and the ubiquitous Chief Tony Anenih (never to be missing in action where such matters are concerned). Below these men’s pictures were the portraits of Chief Bode George (Boy George) of the ports authority contract splitting fame; then former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Chairman, Ahmadu Ali of the Ali mun go fame; Mahmud Aliyu Shinkafi, former Governor of Zamfara state; Olisa Metuh, PDP’s national publicity secretary and Tanko Yakassai, a founding member of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), among others. We were told that they all ate in Dasuki’s alluring forbidden porridge. As elders who did not know how to say ‘no’ when they should, what they thought they had eaten in secret and cleaned mouth has now become a subject of open discourse, and in some cases, open acrimony. It is immaterial whether whatever they got was Dasuki’s forbidden porridge or PDP’s poisoned chalice.

Chief Falae collected N100million; Nwobodo N500million; Ladoja N100million; Odili N100million; Anenih N260million; George N100million; Ali N100million; Shinkafi N100million, Metuh N400million and Yakassai, N63million, among others. These are mostly elders in their own right; and please, when I talk of elders I am only talking in terms of age. So, nobody should begin to have funny ideas about Yoruba elders or Hausa elders or Igbo elders, or something. Chief Falae was born September 21, 1938, which means he will turn 78 this year. Boy George was born on November 21, 1945. He will be 70 this year. Nwobodo was born May 9, 1940 (75 years); Ladoja was born September 25, 1944 (71 years); Odili was born August 15, 1948 (67 years); Anenih August 4, 1933 (82 years); Ahmadu Ali was born March 1, 1936 (79 years); Yakassai was born in 1926 (89 years). Metuh is probably the youngest of the lot.

We must commend whoever drew up the list because it is truly national. Forget about whether some of the people there are paper or feather weight, or whether they even have any weight at all to deliver whatever entitled to them to the booty. One must commend the spread, at least in terms of its geo-political balancing.

Even the south-east that perpetually cries marginalisation is silent for once because the region is ably represented as only two of their own in the pack, (Nwobodo and Metuh) between them obtained about N900m, far in excess of the paltry N300million that Falae, George and Ladoja got or, better put, obtained. We need to know the sharing formula though, otherwise, the south west too will protest its abysmal share in the booty. I only hope when people start sharing the jail terms too, some sections would not cry marginalisation. When Chief Olusegun Obasanjo became president in 1999, one of the first things he did was purge the military of ‘political military officers’ (those soldiers who had tasted political offices and were therefore thought to have known the difference between good and bad, so that they would not contaminate the system). Because a section of the country benefited most from the political appointments, that section naturally had more casualties. This is only a natural sequence. So, those who got bumper obtainment must not complain when the jumbo jail terms come and many of their elders cannot make it back home from prison.

No doubt some of these people have come a long way in obtaining. Chief Anenih, for instance; Boy George is another. That was why a man like Chief Anenih obtained N260million and gave ALL out and took nothing from it. The biblical widow’s mite must have informed his uncommon candour. That there is no wrangling (at least none so far) in the ‘Anenih sector’ concerning the disbursements is enough proof of his vast experience on the matter. Conversely, that the ‘Falae sector’ has been shouting that he be crucified because they were not told that anyone obtained on their behalf probably indicates the novice that Falae is in the business.

Indeed, until now, we had thought that someone like Chief Falae does not or would never obtain. Now we are better informed. But it is good that some of these people are being demystified in the twilight of their lives. Perhaps but for Dasukigate, we would have been having wrong impressions about their true personalities. How can people of their age say they got millions to form alliance with a stinking and sinking government? So, where is honour in all of these? For the Yorubas in the present pack, they messed themselves up just because they do not like someone’s face. Do you now put your cap on your navel simply because you are quarrelling with your head?

Show me another set of elders who would rather eat up their children’s tomorrow today! “‘The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? Elders sharing public funds in a country where millions of youths are jobless, where virtually everything has ‘disorganised’, to borrow Fela Anikulapo’s expression! Ha!

It always bothers me to see people who should be thinking of the hereafter still hankering after material things. But a guest at our editorial board meeting last week shed what looked like some light on the matter when she made the point that old age is capital-intensive. Until then, I had thought something being capital-intensive has to do with certain businesses only. I guess our guest’s explanation would have made sense to me more than the alibi given by Chief Falae that he did not obtain from the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) but rather from the N21billion the PDP realised at its campaign fund-raiser last year. How did the chief know from where the money came? Was the money obtained from ONSA carrying ONSA stamp to indicate it came from there? Has the chief bothered to trace the genealogy of the money or ask those who gave it to him?

Anyway, since I am now better educated that old age is capital-intensive, I forgive Chief Falae and the other elders for obtaining, even if without a thought for the leaders of tomorrow. My fear though is that the way they had obtained, thus contributing to the free fall of our currency, the Naira would definitely not be among the legal tenders in heaven. So, those of them hoping to continue spending Naira there when they die would be roundly disappointed.

January 17, 2016
As Metuh trumps Taiwan shredder, Baba Lekki sings Kusimilaya

These are definitely interesting times in Nigeria, with outlandish revelations about state larceny followed by even more outlandish revelations. No one knows who is going to be “outed” next. It is a grand parade of fallen idols of the tribe. You never know what will do it for you, whether it is unreceipted free lunch or a casual bulge under flowing agbada robes after a chance meeting which you never know was being faithfully videoed. In order to forestall any untoward eventuality, snooper sent Okon to the market to buy a strong and durable shredder.

The crazy boy had hardly departed when Baba Lekki took up position blabbing insensate nonsense while waiting for his juvenile accomplice.

“Ina dogo?” the crazy old man began with a savage sneer. “You mean say dem Buhari man go try all dem old people, Tanko Yakassai, Mr Fix am and dem Yoruba chief? Dem mortuary go get work ooo”.

“Listen, I am not a politician, I am a policy analyst”, snooper snapped in utter irritation.

“ Weeereeee!!!”, the crazy old man screamed as he jumped at snooper. “Policy ko, publicity ni. If you no be politician why you dey send for shredder? Wo, waa gbaa !” Before snooper could regain his composure, the ancient agitator began singing a cruel parody of an old classic.

Mori baba kan t’onjo, kusimilaya

Ewa woran mi male gboju mi oo

Biosi t’ewon to duro mba ba baba yen lo oo

Mori baba kan t’onjo kusimilaya .

It was at this point that Okon barged in without any shredder or shred of truth.

“And you, what happened, where is the shredder?” snooper demanded angrily.

“Ah oga dem Ibo trader come ask whether na Metuh or Taiwan shredder you want”, Okon replied with a sadistic grin.

“And what is that supposed to mean?” snooper shouted.

“Oga no vex. As dem come explain, Metuh na man and Taiwan na machine. But where dem Metuh man dey whack ten sheets of paper per minute dem Taiwan machine dey manage only two. So na market be dat”, Okon explained.

“Kai, kai Okon, na dat one dem Yoruba people dey call Gbetu-gbetu”, the old contrarian snorted as he dragged the crazy boy away.

January 17, 2016
Polemics of 1966 coup, civil war and current agitations

January 15, 1966 will remain a watershed in Nigerian history, even if the lessons it teaches fall on deaf ears. Five majors had on that day executed a coup planned to, in the opinion of the coupists, wipe off the cream of Nigeria’s decadent leadership. The coup miscarried, leading to the wiping off of a large section of the then Northern Nigeria military and political leadership, a significant but nonetheless small part of Western Nigeria leadership, and a yet smaller and insignificant part of Eastern Nigeria leadership. The cruel interplay of forces led to the stigmatisation of the coup as an Igbo plot to forcefully and malevolently take over Nigeria while castrating the North. Fifty years later, lessons have appeared not to have been learnt, and various schismatic groups in Nigeria still hunker down in their ethnic and religious enclaves in ways that are either apparent or unapparent.

A few days before that famous anniversary, polemicists from the north to the south, east and west organised a welter of symposia and workshops to mark the occasion and enable a reflection of the convulsive events that triggered the coup, countercoup and civil war. The almost universal view in the South is that the coup was justified, the execution faulty, and the objectives patriotic. Evidence have been led to show that the leaders of the coup actually intended to hand over the reins of power to Obafemi Awolowo, first Premier of Western Region who was at the time incarcerated. The five majors who planned the coup attested to this fact. They hinged their altruism on the fact that Chief Awolowo was a tested and courageous leader, excellent bureaucrat and administrator, and great and principled nationalist.

For seeming to justify the reasons for the coup, and arguing that the coup was neither an Igbo coup nor a plan to achieve political power by the perpetrators, many southern commentators are pilloried by northern polemicists who suggest that a fruitless attempt to rewrite history was afoot. At a gathering to mark the anniversary of the coup and the end of the civil war, northern leaders, including Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, and Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, last week suggested that though they opposed reopening of old wounds, they took exception to an attempt to rewrite the history of those terrible events of January 1966, and the equally fruitless effort to rubbish the legacy of one of the principal victims of the coup, former Premier of the Northern Region, Ahmadu Bello, the eponymous Sardauna of Sokoto. The polemicists do not agree that misrule by especially the Sardauna, Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa, and others in the ruling coalition of the time inspired the coup.

“It is important that we keep history truthful and even if we forgive and forget, we must never allow history to be rewritten because what is happening in Nigeria today is a new narrative,” warned Emir Sanusi II. He added: “Sardauna was not a victim, Tafawa Balewa was not a victim and neither were they the cause of the problem. We cannot accept this. We do not want people to reopen old wounds because everyone has been hurt, everyone has been offended, everyone has lost people, everyone has been marginalized, everyone has tasted power, everyone has produced good and corrupt leaders. No one has monopoly of power or corruption or oppression. So, why don’t we, as one country learn from our history because history cannot be forgotten.” Governor el-Rufai on his own said the northern governors associated themselves with the views of the Emir of Kano, suggesting that any attempt to discredit those whose legacies the North still enjoys would be resisted. “The governors agree fully with the sentiment and statement expressed by the Emir of Kano. As northern governors, we want peace in Nigeria, we want unity in our diversity and we want development in Nigeria.”

It is clear that opinions on the coup may never be reconciled. The North, by and large, still detests the coup; and the South, especially the eastern part, views the coup nostalgically, even romantically. It is also apparent that the country’s elites are still ensconced in their various ethnic cocoons. They will not break out of those cocoons anytime soon, nor will they soften their ossified views of the period. Not only have lessons not been learnt, there is very little conscious effort being made to engage a dispassionate study of the issues that led to the highly disruptive events of that year. It is even all the more certain that 50 years after the coup, Nigeria has not produced a truly national leader, not one, to weld the various groups in the country together, weaken primordial ethnic and religious attachments, and inspire through brilliant and targeted policies and actions a unified country where ‘tribes and tongues’ would not inhibit standing in ‘brotherhood’.

The implication is that five decades after, sentiments of ethnic exceptionalism, sense of entitlement, and acrimonious sectarianism are not only rife among the country’s leaders, these vices also remain encased in a stupendously unworkable political structure supervised or enforced by security agents whose unprofessional, atavistic behaviour is worse than the British colonialists bequeathed. The country papered over the cracks exposed, not really caused, by the 1966 coup. It also glossed over the huge structural dissonance that continues to undermine peace and stability in the county and weaken and distort the bureaucracy. And, more destructively, there was no closure to the coup and countercoup crises, nor to the civil war. This is why northern and southern leaders stay comfortably unembarrassed in their sanctimonious and self-made cocoons, venturing out only to strike bargains and alliances for prebendal reasons. And this is why even ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, with all his years in office, is unruffled by his little appreciation of many national phenomena, including the civil war in which he was a notable actor. He pronounces the concept of Biafra dead, when the ideas that inspired, shaped and sustained it have remained fresh and gallingly relevant. Nigeria is undone by its ignorant, parochial and self-centred leaders.

The issues thrown up by the 1966 coup, countercoup and civil war are not so intractable that a brilliant, selfless and purposeful leader cannot unravel. No Nigerian leader has attempted to grapple with those issues, and regional leaders are too embroiled in the January 15 controversy, and love their people and their religions too much, to do a dispassionate deconstruction of the complex phenomena that unhinged the nation nearly 50 years ago. Perhaps one day, before it is too late, that leader will come, that deus ex machina.

January 17, 2016
The gift of life

November 2, last year, I was preparing to go home from the office at about 7.30pm when I started feeling feverish. Within minutes I was shaking due to cold and only managed to drive home.

Though I didn’t use any drug overnight, I felt a bit better in the morning but stayed back home to get some treatment. It was not until Wednesday morning that I went to the hospital.

I was diagnosed of fever and was given drugs to use. By the weekend, it seemed I was getting over what initially appeared to be a simple illness but I had to return to the hospital for further checks when the pains in my heels did not subside.

I was admitted for some tests to be sure of what the real ailment was and by the time the results were out after two days, the Medical Director immediately referred me for an urgent treatment at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH).

As I found out later, one of the results was so bad that the doctor couldn’t risk retaining me in his hospital. In case I didn’t have enough money on me, the director gave me N50,000 required for emergency admission in the Private Partnership Ward in LUTH if there was no bed space in the regular ward.

As the director envisaged, there was no space for regular admission. I was given the option of staying in the car that brought me until a space could be found, or take the expensive emergency option.

Thank God for the director, I had enough to pay for the N50,000 for 24hours stay in the emergency ward and was moved to the regular ward the next day.

I ended up being on admission in LUTH for two weeks during which I underwent numerous tests and treatment. That I came out of LUTH is indeed the grace of God. Three patients died in the ward I stayed before I was discharged, while another, whose condition had improved and was waiting to be discharged, died a week after.

The two weeks I was on admission in LUTH exposed me to the true state of our health system.

At LUTH, which is supposed to be one of the best health institutions in the country, I witnessed the decay and inadequacy of facilities. Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel were obviously overwhelmed by the number of patients they had to attend to. I remember the night two nurses in my ward slept off and it took more than ten minutes of loud banging of the door to wake them.

The competence of some personnel is questionable as their prescriptions were openly overruled by superior officers. Who knows how many patients have died due to wrong diagnosis and treatment.

Cost of drugs and tests required to keep many patients alive are prohibitive and some died because they could not afford to pay.

Given the various limitations, it was obvious that it takes the grace of God for any patient to come out alive from LUTH and other health institutions in the country.

Last Thursday, my clinic appointment to see the doctor at LUTH was extended for two weeks because there were too many others waiting to be attended to on the same day.

Years of neglect, as President Muhammadu Buhari once noted in a coup speech, has turned our hospitals into consulting clinics. Hopefully, now that he is back in the saddle, he will do what is needed to improve on health delivery in the country.

I thank God for the gift of life. Indeed, doctors and other personnel can try their best to care; only God can heal.

January 17, 2016
God Will Help Us!

The dialogue ended with no one proffering solutions, so someone sighed and said pontifically, God Will Help Us. I had a mind to ask if he had God’s word on the matter, just to be sure, like.

In the days just gone by, the entire nation has been suffused in laughter, incredulity and pain. And so, our vision is somewhat clouded this week by matters such as the ‘missing 2016 national budget’ document, the $2.1bn armsgate, the needless pillages that go on in this country daily on Nigerian roads and in government, and so on. All of these heavily hang upon us, even as we take a somewhat somber look at our national philosophy.

You know what that is, don’t you? It’s that field of study which opens unto you other fields of study without providing any definite answer to those fields of study that led you to that field of study, get my drift? What I love about it is that it is the only subject where you are permitted to ask more questions than you can give answers to, especially in examination scripts. For example, how do you know that you know what you know? Beautiful.

This system is fraught with dangers, of course. Whenever steam threatens to blow out of my ears because someone’s action or inaction has lit of fire of rage inside of me, I treat myself with a simple mental massage: the action never really happened; I just imagined it. Better still: he/she does not really exist; I have been imagining him/her all along. The draw back in this law however surfaces when it is time to collect the monthly housekeeping allowance in the house. He just may decide that my dainty outstretched palm does not really exist; he is only imagining it.

This yo-yo system of questioning does not happen often in the sciences, for there, you cannot afford too many questions. Imagine what would happen if scientists monitoring the landing of a space craft, which they have just sent to space, begin to ask themselves such questions as ‘But how do we know that the craft we have sent really exists? What if we have merely imagined it?’ Were that to happen, I assure you there’ll be nothing to land in but hot soup.

In most countries, goals are purposed and designed for the common good such that even the littlest person, e.g. the president’s little old lady, is given an identity within the confines of that philosophy. Call that philosophy an ideology if you like, and you will come up with different practices in different parts of the world that sound very much like what I am talking about. And so, you may come across the Welfarist hues of the West which means essentially that even the president may benefit from social welfare, no matter how badly he governs. The Socialist hues of the East practically guarantees that a president is obliged to share his palace with the people for the common good, never mind that no good is ever common. In the South of the world, however, the philosophy often disseminated is called ‘God Will Help Us’. Naturally. It means essentially that we, the people, do not get the opportunity to lift a finger to do anything for ourselves.

When someone sermonized not too long ago that we should Ask Nothing of God, we all listened. Honest. But we promptly went back on our knees to do what we know best, Ask Everything of God. Why not?! Because He is about the only person we know who can make the oil to flow under our parcel of earth, provide buyers for the crude and then provide those who sell the refined stuff back to us. He is the one who helps us; and yes, he even brings food right round to us. God does help us.

The other day, I watched in fascination as a large alligator slowly ambulated across the road. Many drivers pulled off the road on the instant, left their cars running and dived into the bush after the animal. I could not believe it, but close to eleven cars did the instantaneous parking thing that day…I then watched from afar as hefty men pulled at the retreating tail of the poor thing. Was that hunger or something? God Will Help Us!

While traversing the land, you are assaulted by evidences of religiosity. When you call a price that the market woman does not want to hear, she tells you, ‘God forbid it’. When you accuse an artisan of cheating on the materials he has used on your work, he swears that ‘God is his witness’ if he has done any such thing. When a Nigerian asks you to rub his palm with a certain sum, he swears that but for the fact that he fears God, he should not do for you what he is about to do even if it is his job to do it. Do you now wonder why God is so busy? He has to keep tag of the things we ask him to forbid, reject, witness, bind, loose, claim, accept, and decree, even our non-military decrees. God Will Help Us!

The other day, someone parked his car right in the middle of the turning to my house. Why? Just to enable him purchase an item from a nearby kiosk. This meant of course that no car could enter the street via that turning. A conversation then ensued among the very indignant occupants of my own car to wit: Nigerians are very selfish and inconsiderate; everyone thinks of himself only in every matter particular; no one has any respect for the law; yet Nigerians perform quite well in other climes. I only half-listened to all these, for I was more hungry than interested after a long day’s work. After proselytizing endlessly on the matter, the dialogue ended with no proffered solutions, so someone heaved a deep sigh, exhaled deeply and said pontifically, God Will Help Us. He said it with such authority I had a mind to ask if he had God’s word on the matter, just to be sure, like, so I could stop worrying about the whole thing.

At yet another conversation, I listened and this time participated as the nation’s woes were dissected to wit: our president listens to no man but follows only his own counsel; everyone carries on national affairs without any thought for the children unborn; the fact that stealing is reducing the country to shreds without any intervention; and the fact that everyone knows the truth about this country but no one is willing to say it because those in powerful places just do not want to know. Then we sighed and exhaled: God Will Help Us. This time, I did ask if anyone had God’s assurances on the matter. No one answered me.

Sometimes, I have listened to one gory tale after another of armed attacks on defenseless people who are merely in the business of transporting themselves painfully from one day onto the next with very little hope on the painful way. I listen and hear of a female youth whose fingers were laid on the tarmac and chopped off for not yielding what she had on her to highway robbers. God Will Help Us.

Events since independence have reinforced more and more the fact that Nigeria as an entity remains only in the mind of Lord Luggard. That is why no one seems to be taking the issue of governance too seriously. And so, when disaster throws its grenades at us, we move from wringing our hands, to packing them on top of our heads, to dancing around the problem in circles, and then to waxing philosophical: God will help us. What the… Why, even in the matter of someone using N2.1bn for political advertisements, God Must Help Us.

Note: This is an edited version of an article first published in 2006.

January 17, 2016
Dispirited PDP and opposition crisis

With dozens of its chieftains arrested or questioned by anti-graft agencies and the secret service, and many more being readied for scalding or sundry and subtle judicial pressures, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is desperately clutching at straws to mitigate the political and spiritual cataclysm it feared would be its lot if it lost the 2015 general elections. The party lost the elections badly to the All Progressives Congress (APC) virtually at every conceivable level, and what it feared the most, apocalypse engendered by the unyielding and ascetic Muhammadu Buhari, has come upon it with unremitting vengeance. Party members are in disarray, and party leadership, never inspiring or altruistic at the best of times, has wilted so completely that no one can point at anyone of intellectual substance or moral mettle left in the party’s top echelon.

Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan led the party to defeat, after clumsily presiding over the affairs of the country for over five years. By retiring to his home state of Bayelsa, and in fact his hometown of Otuoke, in quiet but undignified solitude, he gave indication he had figuratively fallen on his sword. In the foreseeable future he will offer no leadership or even admonition of any kind to his besieged party. Olisa Metuh, the party’s national publicity secretary was an incompetent publicist and political voyeur who aped the APC’s Lai Mohammed without the latter’s passion. Even then, he was perhaps the only somewhat sensible voice the party boasted of in the dizzying aftermath of the election. Now that he has been defanged by the anti-graft agency, the EFCC, for allegedly receiving misappropriated public money, his voice will probably become muffled.

Uche Secondus was at best a provocative politician given to much frills than substance, before the courts ousted him as acting national chairman of the party through the litigious Ahmed Gulak, a PDP chieftain and former special adviser to Dr Jonathan. As soon as the acting crown settled around his ears, he launched into an exaggerated and elaborate farce not too dissimilar from what he concocted as “Total Chairman” in his leadership of the party in Rivers State. Other than the founding chairman of DAAR Communications, Raymond Dokpesi, whose woes have paradoxically enlivened his personal disposition and emboldened his politics to take on the government, and the Ekiti State governor, Ayo Fayose, whose rampant and ferocious uncouthness has led him to far more incivilities than his naturally mean manners are suited for, there are no other recognisable names manning the PDP barricades against the Buhari presidency.

But what the PDP needs is not the erection or manning of barricades, nor the clumsy and appalling political menagerie of self-styled and self-appointed saviours like the untutored Mr. Fayose, the melodramatic Mr. Metuh and the cantankerous Mr. Fani-Kayode. The PDP may be incompetent to appreciate why the country needs it, considering how unerringly it sells itself short and embarks relentlessly on the path of self-destruction, but the country, mercifully, recognises why it needs the PDP. None of the myriad other opposition parties can hold the candle to the PDP. They are small, opportunistic, poorly led, lacking in concrete ideology, short-termist, and eager to enter into pecuniary deals, as the Dasukigate scandal is showing, with courtesan zeal. While the PDP ideology is perversely indefinable, being more eclectic than conservative, and more parochial than humanistic, it managed to harness its modest strengths to control some 10 states (which may shrink further) and a very sizable number of National Assembly seats. In the short run, the PDP, is the closest thing to anything describable as opposition. It will have to be succored and propped up to perform the vital function of aggregating and channeling public reservations and angst against many of APC’s highfalutin and cocksure panaceas.

It will however be difficult for the PDP to function as an opposition party without a brilliant, civil, foresighted and credible leadership. Often in other countries, the loss of an election is sufficient reason to discard party leadership and purge the party of deadwoods, so that fresh ideas, new faces unconstrained by the trauma of defeat, and catalysing party values and principles can be distilled and channeled to present new and more energetic challenges to the ruling party. The PDP has stubbornly retained its traumatised leaders and kept its old and discredited faces, most of them hobbled by the collateral damage from President Buhari’s anti-graft war. The party’s leaders, who should really be protem leaders, have done nothing about the structure, ideology and programmes of their party. And they have reacted in sterile and predictable ways to the onslaught of the ruling party. They have been unable to deconstruct the APC’s plans and programmes, including the budget, not to say react effectively to the ruling party’s copious mistakes and hubristic assault on human rights and legal provisions. Indeed, to all intents and purposes, the country is under one-party rule, a one-party rule worsened by the absence of dissent within the APC itself.

There are fears the PDP will be unable to redeem itself or regain lost grounds on account of the many troubles its leaders have become embroiled in. A parallel is drawn with the APC’s inauspicious beginnings. Formed in 2013, its gait unsteady, and its structure an amalgam of tentativeness and unrealistic and overstretched ambitions, the APC looked anything but ready to snatch power from the entrenched behemoth, the PDP. Even after it presented its road map in 2014 about a year after its formation, the APC still looked and sounded unready for high office. A little over two years down the line, however, not only did the APC sweep into office, it did so magnificently, overwhelmingly and overpoweringly. If the APC could achieve such lofty goals in approximately two years, what could the dispirited PDP, properly restructured and led, and with 16 years rule in the bag, not achieve in four years? Reports of its death or speculations of its dying may, therefore, be greatly exaggerated. In any case, the country desires a powerful opposition; President Buhari himself, sometimes messianic and at other times overassuming and abrasive, needs a strong opposition; and democracy itself needs the opposition to breathe, exhale and moult.

The problem the PDP may have, apart from the excruciating leadership pains it now suffers from, is whether it can have a committed person to marshal the party’s strength, deploy his private resources, equip himself with a transcendental vision of the new PDP, display enormous courage by risking his life and business, all in the service of renewing the party and repositioning it for the great fight ahead. That leader will have to manifest a great understanding of the philosophical nexus between party and country so encompassing that it must possess both a continental and global relevance and application. It is doubtful whether the APC could have been formed let alone record its surprising achievements had Bola Ahmed Tinubu not defied the PDP as governor, plotted a resurgent and ‘internationalist’ Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), inspired the coalition that led to the formation of the APC, mercurially welded it together despite its fissiparous tendency, and revolutionarily led the fight to dethrone the wealthy, entrenched and ruthless PDP, all the while risking his life and business with one single throw of the dice. It was a gamble that paid off, but it was gamble bravely and intelligently taken.

The PDP prides itself in consensus building and collective decision-making, and its beginnings actually gave hint of those fine attributes. But under the practical and military-minded ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, the party quickly morphed into a malignant and subliminal dictatorship so awe-inspiring that challenging him was like courting death. Since the Obasanjo years, successive presidents impractically doubling as party leaders had reinforced that culture of implacable rule. Beneath that culture, however, was another sub-culture of sycophancy that turned presidential aides, advisers and cabinet ministers into a choral group of yes-men and praise singers. To therefore expect that suddenly the PDP can forswear its past habits and indulgent beginnings in favour of enthroning disciplined and structured rule by a collective may be far-fetched.

Unfortunately for the PDP, and notwithstanding the boastful and reckless efforts of politicians like Mr. Fayose, the loquacious Femi Fani-Kayode, and the pretentious Chief Dokpesi, there is no one of substance in the party to serve as an inspiration and rallying point. Years of attrition triggered by Chief Obasanjo’s scorched earth policies had led to the exit of great minds from the party. Solomon Lar is dead; Audu Ogbeh is in the APC, and Atiku Abubakar is perhaps the closest to any living being of a stateless politician in the sense that his attachments to any political party are always tenuous at best and expedient at worst. In the demeaning final analysis, Chief Obasanjo himself publicly and ceremoniously shredded his PDP party card and promoted himself without substantiation to the rank of a statesman. Had he remained in the PDP, though he lacks vision, he could perhaps serve as a rallying point. And had former vice president Atiku stayed put in the PDP, not only would his political advancement be steady and assured, he would today be the party’s natural leader. But if both Chief Obasanjo and Alhaji Atiku were to plot their way back into the soulless and distressed PDP, the searing heat and stress of their reentry, like spacecrafts experience during atmospheric reentry, would accentuate the party’s troubles.

While it is true that the PDP’s main problem is to find a leader capable of reviving the party and restoring it on a path of growth and stability, the countervailing opportunities for a credible opposition party more than make up for the headaches the PDP and its teflon leaders will be experiencing. Whether anyone agrees or not, the Buhari presidency is directly or indirectly decimating the PDP. Had PDP leaders fallen on their sword after the great defeat of last year, and new leaders produced, the misfortune of the disgraced leaders would not be intertwined with that of the party. The Buhari presidency may be riding high at the moment, latching and leveraging on the anti-corruption war as it were, yet, the president has demonstrated lack of democratic credentials and insufficient vision on such a disconcerting scale that they offer a credible, cohesive and focused opposition party reasons to campaign for relevance and even much more.

In President Buhari’s first media chat, he also showed his worrisome understanding of the inalienable rights granted Nigerians by their constitution. The president believes some of those rights can be negotiated or be made to suffer diminution on account of the severity or gravity of the offences committed by a citizen. A sensible opposition party can turn this into a major campaign issue, notwithstanding the popular sentiments against the so-called treasury looters. In addition, the president also showed an incomplete understanding of Nigeria’s national military doctrine vis-a-vis the constitutional imperatives guaranteeing the safety, security and well-being of both law-abiding and lawbreaking citizens. His unflattering approach to the Shiites/Army clash of early December is an example. Added to a welter of poor and contradictory economic policies strangulating business and society, the president’s unsure approach to the rights of citizens and the independence of the judiciary should give the opposition ammunition to stake a powerful and credible claim in 2019 and the few important elections before then. So far, however, nothing has come from the PDP.

Can a new opposition party that knows its onions flourish between now and 2019? It is not certain, even if it could build on the foundation of attracting or luring dissenters from both the PDP and APC. The APC came at an opportune time, when the PDP was in the throes of a grave sickness, and many foundling parties embracing lofty ideas and ambitions were itching for war, whether fratricidal or regicidal. The objective conditions on the ground today, probably as a result of President Buhari’s politics and anti-graft war, make it a very testy and uncertain proposition to form a great opposition party. But should the PDP disintegrate, and other minor parties prove too weak to stand in the gap, then the moment may be ripe, and as the English say, needs must when the devil drives.

To cut the time short and save the nation plenty of trouble and expenses, the PDP must be encouraged to stand up to be counted, and fight. It must purge its ranks and leadership and produce a great revolutionary. It must rid itself of the usurpers and self-appointed spokesmen claiming to represent its ideals. It must restructure and renew itself. And it must, with a set of new leaders and purposeful recruitment of new members, offer needed social, political and economic alternatives to the fairly capricious and untested Buhari presidency. The problems are pressing; the solution must also be urgent.

January 10, 2016